Hydrologists Find Mississippi River’s Buffering System for Nitrates is Overwhelmed
AUSTIN, Texas — A new method of measuring the interaction of surface water and groundwater along the length of the Mississippi River network adds fresh evidence that the network’s natural ability to chemically filter out nitrates is being overwhelmed.
The research by hydrogeologists at The University of Texas at Austin, which appears in the May 11 edition of the journal Nature Geoscience, shows for the first time that virtually every drop of water coursing through 311,000 miles (500,000 kilometers) of waterways in the Mississippi River network goes through a natural filtering process as it flows to the Gulf of Mexico. (more…)